The latest Information Age online poll asked readers whether they believe that the IT department is losing influence. The majority – 56% – believe that it is, compared with 34% who disagree and 8% who do not know (figures are rounded).
An online poll does not give much room for explanation, but a few trends do provide some explanation for this finding.
The most obvious is ‘bring your own device’. BYOD was certainly the most discussed IT strategy issue in 2012, if not the most widely deployed. Clearly, the ability of users to choose their own hardware robs the IT department of the power to directly impose a device selection strategy.
It is debatable whether this really matters, however. For one thing, employees buying their own kit liberates IT budget. For another, an employee’s choice of smartphone is hardly of strategic significance for the organisation.
Another, more troubling trend for IT leaders is the apparent division between traditional IT and the new, exciting world of digital media and ecommerce.
The BYOD trend inevitably means that IT is losing some of its control in the enterprise: tech-savvy employees across all lines of business are choosing which devices and even which applications they want to use, and line of business managers are also looking for the best ways to use technology to drive results.
This trend is too big for IT managers to fight, and their role is subsequently changing to one that’s about managing innovation wherever it springs up within an organisation. While there will continue to be an obvious need for central governance of IT and control over corporate data security in particular, IT should increasingly see itself as an enabler, looking at ways to open up to new systems, devices and apps that employees prefer and feel help them to do their jobs better.
Last year saw the emergence of a ‘chief digital officer’ role, with organisations including Starbucks appointing an executive with responsibility for customer-facing web and mobile-based systems, who does not report to the CIO.
Even though digital information systems continue to revolutionise business and society, it seems as though the exciting stuff is not seen as the IT department’s remit. Instead, IT is charged with implementing and maintaining transactional systems in order to achieve gradual efficiency improvements.
This is certainly more worrying for IT leaders whose career history places them in the latter camp. Traditional IT professionals may not have the necessary experience to devise web and mobile technology strategies or manage projects designed to improve customer engagement.
Leaving aside the implications for IT management careers, what does this shift mean for the organisations themselves? Will the IT department’s waning influence mean that the business suffers from poor portfolio management or data integration, for example? Or is this wishful thinking from IT’s old guard?
Either way, this is certainly an existential threat for IT leaders to ponder in 2013.
The BYOD trend inevitably means that IT is losing some of its control in the enterprise: tech-savvy employees across all lines of business are choosing which devices and even which applications they want to use, and line of business managers are also looking for the best ways to use technology to drive results.
This trend is too big for IT managers to fight, and their role is subsequently changing to one that’s about managing innovation wherever it springs up within an organisation. While there will continue to be an obvious need for central governance of IT and control over corporate data security in particular, IT should increasingly see itself as an enabler, looking at ways to open up to new systems, devices and apps that employees prefer and feel help
them to do their jobs better.
Historically, IT teams wanted to implement stuff as it was exciting, and the impact of any problems only hit a few people. As time went on, the IT team wanted to keep things as they were, as any change risked bringing the system down and affecting the vast majority of employees. So IT has moved from being the “yes” team to the “no” team.
Then shadow IT started to creep in and with cloud came the total bypass of IT. Now, IT has to become a source of information, answering the questions of where different functions can best be sourced from, how they will integrate, how BYOD will be embraced, and how information will be secured and aggregated in a way that is best for the business.
All of this is business-focused, and to regain any influence, IT has to become business-savvy – and drop the technology focus.
